If you use more than one connector, you should use parentheses to indicate precisely what you want
to search for. For example, apple and pear or orange could mean (apple and pear) or orange,
or it could mean apple and (pear or orange).

Words and PhrasesUse quotation marks to indicate an exact phrase. You can use a phrase anywhere in a search request.
Example:apple w/5 "fruit salad" will return any articles where the term apple is within 5 words of the
phrase fruit salad.

Note: Noise words, such as if and the, are generally discarded in searches and should be avoided.
In phrases, if they contain a noise word, the search engine will skip over the noise word in a special manner.
For example, a search for "statue of liberty" would retrieve any article
containing the word statue, any intervening word, and the word liberty.

Punctuation is treated as spaces and should be avoided. For example, the term can't would be
treated as two search terms: can and t.
1843(c)(8)(ii) would be treated as 1843c8ii (four terms).

Note: Use of the * wildcard character near the beginning of a word
is harder to process and will take somewhat longer to return results.

Fuzzy SearchingFuzzy searching will find a word even if it is misspelled.
For example, a fuzzy search for apple will also find appple. Fuzzy
searching can be useful when you are searching text that may contain typographical errors,
or for text that has been scanned using optical character recognition (OCR). To add
fuzziness to your searches use the % character. The number of % characters you add determines
the number of differences the search engine will ignore when searching for a word.
The position of the % characters determines how many letters at the start of the word
have to match exactly. For example:

ba%nanaWord must begin with ba and have at most one difference between it and banana.

b%%ananaWord must begin with b and have at most two differences between it and banana.

AND ConnectorUse the AND connector in a search request to connect two expressions, both of which must be found in any article retrieved. For example:
apple and pear would retrieve any article that contained both terms. (apple or banana) and (pear w/5 grape) would retrieve any article that (1) contained either apple OR banana AND (2) contained pear within 5 words of grape.

OR ConnectorUse the OR connector in a search request to connect two expressions, at least one of which must be found in any article retrieved. For example, apple pie or poached pear would retrieve any article that contained apple pie, poached pear, or both.

W/N ConnectorUse the W/N connector in a search request to specify that one word or phrase must occur within N words of the other. For example, apple w/5 pear would retrieve any article that contained apple within 5 words of pear.
The following are examples of search requests using W/N:

Note: some types of complex expressions using the W/N connector will produce
ambiguous results and should be avoided. The following are examples that may return ambiguous
search results:(apple and banana) w/10 (pear and grape)
(apple w/10 banana) w/10 (pear and grape)

In general, at least one of the two expressions connected by W/N must be a
single word or phrase or a group of words and phrases connected by OR. For example:

(apple and banana) w/10 (pear or grape) - apple and banana both within 10 words of either pear or grape(apple and banana) w/10 orange - apple and banana both within 10 words of orange

The search engine also uses two built-in special words to indicate the beginning and end of an article:
xfirstword and xlastword. These terms are useful if you want to limit a search to the
beginning or end of an article. For example, apple w/10 xlastword would search for apple
within 10 words of the end of a article.

NOT and NOT W/NUse NOT in front of any search expression to reverse its meaning.
This allows you to exclude articles from a search. For example:
apple and not pear

NOT standing alone can also be the start of a search request.
For example, not pear would
retrieve all articles that did not contain pear.

If NOT is not the first term in a search request, you must include
AND or OR. For example apple or not pear and not (apple w/5 pear) are both
valid search requests.

The NOT W/ ("not within") operator allows you to search for a word
or phrase not in association with another word or phrase. Example:
apple not w/20 pear

Note: Unlike the W/ operator, NOT W/ is not symmetrical. That is, apple not w/20 pear is not the same as pear not w/20 apple. In the apple not w/20 pear
request, the search engine searches for apple and excludes cases where apple is too close to pear. In the pear not w/20 apple
request, the search engine searches for pear and excludes cases where pear is too close to apple.

You may use the following options to refine your searches:

Use quotation marks around text to force a search for a particular phrase or term. For example, typing "promissory note" will return articles containing that exact term. Without the quotation marks, all articles containing both the words promissory and note would be returned.

Use a minus sign (-) directly in front of any word or phrase (no space) to exclude that term. For example, typing "promissory note" -recession will return articles containing the term promissory note but not the word recession.

*Note: These two options are only available when utilizing the "Text" search category - that is, when searching the entire library contents.